DOING THE MATH: SEI Bets on a Diverse Fund Management Team

Transcription

1 DOING THE MATH: SEI Bets on a Diverse Fund Management Team

2 NE out of every TEN managers of mutual funds and ETFs in the U.S. and Canada is a woman. 1

3 Wall Street has long been considered a boys club. Only one out of every five of the 26,340 managers of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds registered in 56 countries is a woman despite the fact that mixed-gender fund management teams produce better investment results than single-gender teams. 1 The gender gap is even more pronounced in the U.S. and Canada, where only about 10% and 11% of fund managers, respectively, are women. 1 SEI s Investment Management Unit (IMU) beats both the U.S. and Canadian national averages of female fund managers. A diverse and well-qualified group of women comprise 20% of the IMU s portfolio management team. Blending their artistic, technical and strategic talents, these women are responsible for a combined total of more than $66 billion in assets. 2

4 Sandra Ackermann-Schaufler, CFA Senior Portfolio Manager, International and Emerging Market Equities Growing up in Austria, Sandra s first love was dance; she thrived on the combination of emotion, artistry and intensity the discipline requires. She danced professionally, traveling to Japan, the U.K. and Italy, until an injury sidelined her at age 23. She then pursued an academic degree, opting to major in economics. Although this field of study surprised some close to her, she insists there are parallels between finance and dance. I always did well in mathematics, and ballet is very much about patterns and numbers. As a dancer and performer, you must be able to quickly learn combinations and commit things to memory; finance requires similar skills. When I first experienced the trading room during an internship, I immediately knew that I had found my new home and passion. It fascinated me in the same way that dance did when I was young, Sandra recalls. As a senior portfolio manager who is fluent in German, English, French and Spanish, Sandra runs 10 international and emerging-markets equity funds with more than $19 billion in assets. Before joining SEI in 2009, she worked at, among others, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Asset Management and Allianz Asset Management in New York, Frankfurt and Munich, respectively. She likens the challenge of improving fund performance and regaining investor confidence to the thrill of performing onstage. According to her, both fund management and dance combine art and science; both also demand discipline and the ability to replicate patterns. Years of ballet training taught her how to handle failure and helped her develop a self-critical eye traits that have served her well during her 22-year career in portfolio management. The more diverse we are as an industry, the better we can serve our investors by reflecting their diversity. Sandra is a vocal proponent of SEI s Women s Network, a grassroots employee-run organization formed in 2007 that seeks to inspire and support the professional growth of women at SEI and in the surrounding community. Women lack role models in this industry, she says. They are discouraged from pursuing asset management and instead are told they should explore different careers. More must be done to educate girls and young women about the rewards of this job. The more diverse we are as an industry, the better we can serve our investors by reflecting their diversity.

5 Erin Garrett Portfolio Manager, U.S. Fixed Income It could be said that Erin s career path began on a Monopoly game board. My twin brother and two older brothers used to tell me that I was the most trustworthy person in our family, so I was always the Monopoly banker, she remembers with a smile. Now, as a portfolio manager in SEI s IMU, she oversees $43 billion across 34 U.S. fixed-income mutual funds and separate accounts. I always had an interest in finance. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I was running my own personal portfolio, says Erin. My dad said, You re interested in this? Great, here s your college fund. The rule was that if I lost any money, he would replenish it which was a great deal with no downside for me! My first stock pick was Home Depot. I noticed at the time that many people weren t moving from house to house, but lots of people were remodeling their homes. Erin did so well managing her college fund that she decided to major in business administration and finance at Villanova University. When I was younger, I wanted to be a brain surgeon. I was motivated by the earnings potential, and I wanted to help people, she recalls. But I always liked math too, and I thought one of the greatest ways to support people is to help them manage and grow their wealth. So I wound up in finance because it marries my two passions. Even before joining SEI, she left an impression on the company. During her college internship in 2006, Erin pitched the idea for a case-study competition in which interns across SEI would work together in groups, guided by coaches, and present to top-level executives. SEI s human resources team adopted her proposal, and the internship casestudy competition continues to be a highly anticipated event each summer. After graduating in 2007, she joined SEI as part of its Associates Program as a client investment strategy analyst. In 2010, she became a global fixed-income analyst. She was promoted to assistant portfolio manager in 2014, and then to portfolio manager in She says the key to building awareness of asset management as a potential career for girls and young women is early and consistent engagement. We need to spread the word early on to girls even at the middle-school and high-school levels that asset management is a great career choice, says Erin. Once you ve established yourself, built credibility and developed investment acumen, the job allows flexibility and offers a good balance between client interaction and involvement in the more analytical aspects of the field. We need to spread the word early on to girls even at the middle-school and high-school levels that asset management is a great career choice. Also active within SEI s Women s Network, Erin previously served a one-year post as president. During her stint, she improved employee participation by 70% and created two annual flagship programs that collectively attract more than 300 attendees.

6 Daisy Lac Senior Portfolio Manager, Money Markets Daisy, another Monopoly banker who actually worked as a teller in college during summer breaks, gravitated toward numbers at an early age. I was hired as a hostess at a restaurant one summer but wound up behind the counter as a cashier, handling cash and credit-card payments. I was always managing money in some way. She is now a senior fixed-income portfolio manager who specializes in money-market and short-term taxable funds. But while math has generally come easily to Daisy, her career in finance hasn t been without challenges particularly on September 15, Not only did her fund own Lehman Brothers, the financial-services giant that sparked a global financial crisis when it filed for bankruptcy that day she was the one who had bought it. We had a $40 million exposure to Lehman and took a huge loss. When we sold it the day the default happened, we got just $15 million back. Daisy never imagined facing this challenge when she first started working with money-market funds. Risk is typically a minimal factor in this short-term asset class. She earned a B.A. from Tufts University in 1996, majoring in international relations with a focus on economics. After graduation, she worked at John Hancock Life Insurance Company as a number-crunching pension-benefits analyst and wound up in the company s treasury group, managing corporate cash. That was the basis for what I do now [at SEI], which is running cash mandates for the fixed-income investment team, she says. She then moved to Investors Bank & Trust to work in securities lending. In 2007, she arrived at SEI. I definitely have been involved in investments that did not work out. Then again, I have always helped work through those situations and have been part of the solution. I came here because SEI wanted to bring the reinvestment of cash collateral from securities lending in-house. My broad background in cash management and previous experience with securities lending reinvestment made me a good fit for this role. We built a liquidity fund which reinvests the cash collateral generated by securities lending from the ground up. And it s still standing ten years later, Daisy says. The Lehman Brothers default provided a learning experience for her, who also oversees the cash position in the $33 million SEI Long-Short Alternative Fund. She has often been the sole woman in the room throughout her career but says she has never felt singled out for not making good investment decisions. I definitely have been involved in investments that did not work out. Then again, I have always helped work through those situations and have been part of the solution. Daisy believes that girls should be encouraged from a young age to take a deeper interest in math. There s a general notion that girls are not as good with math or numbers as boys are. From early on, they are not made to feel as comfortable working with numbers. It s a self-fulfilling belief that grows and evolves over time.

7 Rachel Volynsky, CFA Senior Portfolio Manager, Canadian Equities What do military intelligence and asset management have in common? As a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, Rachel is in a unique position to understand that both are about connecting the dots and trying to see information that others overlook. I leverage the same skills now as an investor that I did as a young military officer. I try to compute the odds and solve for a plausible outcome. Similar to military strategy, investing is about making important decisions based on incomplete information; it is a game of probabilities. And you must believe that you can do things better, because there always is a way to improve everything, Rachel adds. Born in Moscow, she spent her formative years in Israel, embracing the beach culture and sense of community the young country offered. At age 18, she began a two-year mandatory conscription required of all Israeli citizens. Her fluency in Russian, Hebrew and English helped her as an intelligence officer, a role that entailed handling sensitive information with agility and attention to detail. After completing her military service, Rachel worked as a flight attendant to put herself through law school at Tel Aviv University. She met a young Canadian man while working for the airline and decided to follow him to Toronto, where she completed her undergraduate degree, gave birth to her daughter and then commenced her MBA studies. While in business school, she took an internship with a private-equity firm and discovered a passion for investing. Upon earning her MBA, Rachel was recruited by a large Canadian bank to join its investment-banking training program, but she wound up on the buy side for the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board. During her tenure there, Rachel met friend and mentor Heather Hunter, then head of public equities. 3 Heather s integrity and discipline made a lasting impression on me; her influence has guided me throughout my career. Over the next decade, she moved to TD Asset Management and worked her way up to senior portfolio manager before reuniting with Hunter at Invesco Trimark. Then she spent two years at Calvert Investments in the U.S. where, among other responsibilities, she headed the global fundamental-research team and was lead portfolio manager of two global funds and a domestic strategy. In April 2017, Rachel joined SEI as a senior portfolio manager to oversee more than $2.5 billion 4 in Canadian equity funds. My experience as a fundamental investor with a strong understanding of the quantitative research process and my background in manager oversight position me well for my role at SEI, she notes. Rachel believes that upper management buy-in is critical to encourage diversity. I see a lot of women in this field stuck at lower levels. The fact that SEI has promoted women and hired them for senior portfolio-management positions speaks volumes about its commitment to diversity.... believe that you can do things better, because there always is a way to improve everything.

8 About the SEI Investment Management Unit SEI s Investment Management Unit (IMU) is responsible for creating and maintaining proprietary mutual funds, asset-allocation portfolios, separately managed account programs and alternative investments for a wide range of institutional and individual investors. Our global research and portfoliomanagement efforts include teams based in Oaks, London, Toronto and Hong Kong. SEI s IMU has approximately 106 professionals with an average of 14 years of experience in the industry. The team includes 28 CFA charterholders and 41 members with an MBA. 1 Sargis, Madison and Laura Pavlenko Lutton Fund Managers by Gender: The Global Landscape, white paper, Nov As of April 30, In U.S. dollars. Important Information Information provided by SEI Investments Management Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of SEI Investments Company SEI (07/17)